"Dirty Wars" Filmmaker Jeremy Scahill on the "Drone President" & Obama's Whitewashing of NSA Spying, January 29, 2014

Source: democracynow.org



In his State of the Union address, President Obama called on the United States to "move off a permanent war footing," citing his recent limits on the use of drones, his withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and his effort to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. Obama also vowed to reform National Security Agency surveillance programs to ensure that "the privacy of ordinary people is not being violated."

Jeremy Scahill, whose Oscar-nominated film "Dirty Wars" tackles the U.S. drone war and targeted killings abroad, says Obama has been a "drone president" whose operations have killed large numbers of civilians. On NSA reform, Scahill says "the parameters of the debate in Washington are: should we figure out a way to streamline this and sell it to the American people, or should we do more surveillance?" -democracynow.org

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, December 5, 2013

Source: democracynow.org



This is a summary of news headlines from the United States and around the world as reported by Democracy Now! on Thursday, December 5, 2013.

 
Jeremy Scahill on "Dirty Wars" and U.S. National Security: VICE Podcast 009

The VICE Podcast is a weekly unedited discussion which delves inside the minds of some of the most interesting, creative, and bizarre people we know within the VICE universe. This week, we speak with Jeremy Scahill, national security correspondent for "The Nation," whose work covering America's special operations [forces] and targeted killings in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia is chronicled in the recently released documentary, "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield." As the U.S. continues to expand its use of covert counterterrorism measures worldwide, Scahill argues that far from making Americans safer, U.S. covert counterterrorism measures are in fact undermining national security.